On The Assassin's Trail

Day One: Scoping out the Empire

Nesh fades out, and Stella and Vidan fade in. Breakfast is being served. It’s all very cheery and tasty. We update Vidan and Gale. Vidan decides it’s time to write up a report for the Ministry of Redactions.

Scout requisitions a set of leather armor. It’s cheerfully colored and has a sigil of Their Majesty on it. Scout frowns a bit at that, and Their Majesty says he could switch teams, which causes him to frown more. Their Majesty says oh well, and puts an X over the insignia. Diomarche requisitions a sword.

We leave the castle and Vidan preps the teleport to Zheldat, while Managaratha brews potions..

We teleport to the capital of the Empire. Vidan goes to file his form with the Ministry of Redactions, while the rest of the party goes to the Ministry of Lilacs (with Petal). Li Za is here again, she’s back to being in her 30s (she had been 18 last time we saw her). Gale gets another bottle of Half-Orc allergy potion, and asks if they have anything new and mysterious. The front desk person offers Wisps of Ninja Smoke. Smells like ninja smoke!

We head to the inn, and make Per rolls. There's a patch of strange darkness in the corner, according to Scout. Petal says it's not an assassin.

Managaratha goes and says hello to the corner. Someone sighs and says hello. It’s Rakta, the Priest of Tem who shadowed us last time! Scout tries to gather information.

Vidan gets us rooms, including a stable room for Diomarche.

We try to remember what was happening in Zheldat. There was a… murder that the Minister of War wanted us to find out information about? Inspector Vok was investigating, maybe we should check in with him.

We recall that Stella said (see A Lilac Kind Of Purple) there were two issues:

• The half-orc spy network in the Bureaucracy
• Finding the key to opening the time-stop.

“It’s probably better to avoid fixing the half-orc spy network too fast– the problems are both keeping a third problem in check. Solving either of those two problems will bring a third problem closer.”

Stella thinks the half-orc spy network is actively opposing the third thing.

Vidan remembers that the half-orc assassin The Knife said he served a true heir to the Throne. He also remembers the following Visions of Middlesea:

• Minister of Repercussions Dae, on the Day of Middlesea, said to Vidan: I am disinclined to answer questions, I do not like conveying things like this.
• There are three possible candidates for the Throne. The first would be a bad King, who would damage the Empire but it would be survivable. The second would be a Terrible King– it would lead to a civil war, parts of the Empire would go back to the Broken Lands.
• The Third would be catastrophic. If you do not find at least one of the first or the second by tomorrow, they will be dead by the day after. And either the Third will take the Throne, or the will be Destroyed.
• The Yellow (???)
• There’s a strong possibility you’ll find one of the first two by tomorrow. If you find the Second, make sure
• One of the seven Ministers is a traitor

Stella asks the Goddess what needs fixing in Purple, and Brings It: 17 Successes, 12 DI

• Having an Emperor would be good, although there isn’t a convenient one to hand
• The Orc Invasion needs to be pushed back is important; it will get worse when Middlesea opens, so pushing it back as much as possible before then would be good.
• The Half-Orcish spy ring should be taken apart, because he’ll be a Terrible Emperor. (Making him Emperor would not fix the first problem.)
• Stopping the Pirates would be good.
• Keeping Inspector Vok from being assassinated would be good.
• Eventually we’ll need the key to Middlesea, so figuring that out wouldn’t be bad.
• Making sure no one else gets the Key to Middlesea would be good.

Well that’s somewhat enlightening.

Volda is waiting for us the next day. There’s also a Note from the Ministry of Fortune - Things we could take advantage of when opening Middlesea If we rescue the goblin [Custard] from being killed by Flint we can use him to find a way into Spiritbreaker Fortress. The sauriens have not left with their prize yet, so we can intercept them. And we can acquire evidence for Suvatra before it is destroyed. And we can keep a bunch of people from dying.

Minister Kato will see us tomorrow. We tell Volda we want to see Inspector Vok. He takes us to the Inspectorate.

Gale's assertion:

• Bad Emperor: Orc-Slayer (?)
• Terrible Emperor: Orc Slayer (boss of half orc assassins)
• Catastrophic Emperor: Orc named Slayer (Breaker's Avatar)

We go to the Inspectorate and ask to see Inspector Vok. They say he’s out, they don’t know where he is. Managaratha calls Inspector Vok, and tells him we’re concerned about assassins; he says he’ll head back to the office.

Vidan thinks:

• The Emperor is the wielder of the Sword that is Lost. (The converse is also true.)
• The Sword will recognize its wielder.
• If something wacky has happened, there might be hacks to make the sword recognize them. There’s not more than one Sword that is Lost.
• Primogeniture was the general law, but the Emperor could alter that prior to death if they chose. (The wielder of the sword of the Orcslayer is the Orcslayer.)
• The Emperor had a Death Boon, but if there were twins somewhere along the line, or someone copied the schtick, or something along that line.

Inspector Vok shows up, and Vidan says we were hoping to get an update, but also we believe he’s going to be assassinated. He brings us to a teahouse, where Vidan thinks it is hard to Witness things. The teahouse is called Chrysanthemum Boughs. He asks how we know he’ll be assassinated; we tell him. We try to get an update on his investigations. The Ministry has not seen fit to let him learn the Secrets hidden in the Minister’s House. However, he is reasonably confident that… he looks at Petal. We ask Petal and Volda to step out. It is likely that the sub-minister’s death is related to a number of deaths over the past two years. Vok has been attempting to trace those back to a central… he has not found a pattern that satisfies him as to who the targets have been, but the means and organization seem similar. That may mean an organization being hired by different people, or an organization whose goals he doesn’t understand.

The ministry of Pearls is likely involved– they regulate Actors! (Dame Etni would be proud.) The Minister is Li Sun. She is not a priest, but a fairly skilled Purple Mage, as well as a bureaucrat. Unusually, her sub-minister Tan Karu is a 2nd rank Bureaucrat, rather than a 1st rank Bureaucrat. Normally subministers are two ranks below. Possibly he’s a Priest and she is not; he’s looking into what that’s about.

He lays out some clues, which Vidan and Scout look at. Vidan is convinced the Ministry of Pearls is involved; Scout isn’t convinced but doesn’t rule it out. Vok had planned to stake them out in the next few days.

Vok thinks whoever these people are they have enough eyes in the Bureaucracy that filing reports is a good way to alert them to what you are doing.

Diomarche thinks that the assassins can probably see through disguises, but shapeshift might be better.

We consult with Petal. He thinks none of us will easily pass for Vok, and, also, most assassins will prefer to strike not in public, so do they know where he lives? Many assassins strike at home. With magic that can beat someone with 10-12 Per’s roll, that would be reasonable. A night attack they may not look very hard, just stab whoever is in the bed. Ninja may do observation as well, so you should be smart about the transfer. You could have him walk home and teleport someone in and the target out. The decoy will need a fair amount of protection in order to survive a reasonably trained assassin’s assault from surprise. They’ll need some way to call us in on that happening. It is possible that Petal would notice an assassin arriving if he was in the area and hidden, but any assassin will have some sort of hide schtick. But Petal’s ability to notice assassins is good enough to get past most first-level Hide schticks. (“This guy is good. I bet he thinks about this a lot,” says Scout.)

Wait, won’t they just try again? Petal thinks they’ll send the person available and most likely to succeed; they are unlikely to send the next

What’s useful for the investigation? Inspector Vok thinks him not getting assassinated is most useful. If Petal thinks he can just walk by the building and tell if it’s full of assassins, that would be helpful, but Vok’s expectation is that it’s not full of assassins. It would be good to verify that.

The assassin has some divine defenses; it looks like it will be 2 nights from tonight.

Gale takes Li Za out to dinner.

Day Two: War and Opera

Volda takes us to the Ministry of War. Volda stays outside, and the Minister seals the room against listening. He asks if we have found a priest of the Nameless who could find the codephrase that was known by the sub-minister. We give him a briefing on the assassination attempt. We brief him on the Breaker’s Plan.

We get info on the orc invasion– they were fighting as a coordinated force, but since Middlesea they have been fighting as individual bands, and the failure to coordinate has prevented them from gaining ground. The Head Stallion and he are working on plans to drive them back. Getting Victoria to leave the eastern borders alone was appreciated, and helpful.

Do they need an adventuring band strike force? That’s more Lions’ responsibility than his. The Ministry of Lions probably has something for which they could use a strike force. Unless they’ve been infiltrated by the assassins, but he doesn’t think so, they’re too disorganized.

He tells us that the Ministry of Canals is the newest Ministry; it’s 3rd rank. They handle (surprisingly) canals. It’s not clear there’s much need for the ministry of canals.

There’s an invitation to the theatre with the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

We go. It’s an opera more than a play. It’s a social occasion more than an event you watch; people wander around and chat while the performance happens. The Foreign Minister doesn’t interrogate us; he knows Petal already. He and Petal are watching the audience more than the show.

About two-thirds of the way through, Warmth of Summer shows up. He also recognizes Petal, and says hello. He chats briefly, and asks where we picked up the new Broken miracle that is on us. Vidan tries to look and gets “No information is available at this time.” Scout looks, and his spirit says “We’re not allowed to look at that.” “Huh. Why?” “Because the Breaker set it up so that none of us can look at it.” That seems… unfortunate. We think that having him look at it is probably good, but maybe not right here? In case something bad happens? Hmm. He invites us to the Church the next day; he says it won’t be a problem for us to get into the Church.

Gale uses "Love is a Battlefield" to see what is going on - there are a lot of plots going on in parallel. She notes that the foreign minister is using a very similar shtick, but he's starting with better data. Petal is doing something entirely different. (It's things like promotions and love plots and inter-ministry politics plots; nothing looks like an insurrection plot or a civil war plot.) Nobody here is on Team Catastrophic. There are some people who are maybe on Team Terrible but they aren't pursuing Terrible plots. Nobody on Team Bad here - Gale isn't sure there is a Team for Bad.

Managaratha gets invited to tea at the Ministry of Magic tomorrow.

We go to bed, to prepare for the coming busy day…

Loot

• +8 EPs
• +10 SPs